It is undeniable that the 2000s have been marked by the three manga: One Piece, Bleach and Naruto . If new titles the strong have been able to impose itself in the magazine shĆ“nen ( My Hero Academia, The Promised Neverland, Dr. Stone, Hell’s Paradise …), the readership of biberonnĆ© to the adventures of the young ninja addicted to ramen looked forward to the new series of the father of Naruto .

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During the Jump Festa 19, held in Japan in December 2018, Masashi Kishimoto announced that he had been working for two years on its new series Samurai 8 , with one of his former assistant in the drawing, Akira Okubo. This last was the 7th assistant of Kishimoto and worked with him in the 16th volume in the 72nd and last.

During its announcement, the author had shared the visuals of preparation and said that the new manga would be around three topics close to her heart: science-fiction, japanese culture and clothing.

Kana, the editor of Naruto in France, has obtained the rights to this new manga, and has put in place a solution simultrad (simultaneous translation relative to the broadcast in Japan). The chapters of this new series will be available on the site http://samurai8.kana.fr at the same time as in Japan, mainly to combat the scourge of piracy of titles dismissed.

That is the first chapter of this new series?

If the shinobis (ninjas) are the shadow, then the samurai are the light. Kishimoto has chosen to take the latter as the main subject of his manga. One side of yin/yang omnipresent in this first chapter, which suggests that the author is not going to simply replicate the patterns of Naruto , but, on the contrary, to go looking for the logical opposite.

The story focuses around the character of Hachimaru, a young boy, sickly dreams of becoming a samurai. However, his body sick prevents him from leaving the house and forced to stay attached to a machine of complex treatment. In addition, he has a phobia of anything that is sharp or pointed. Nothing seems to go the way of his dream. But one day, while his father is absent, a samurai in the body of a cat humanoid and will change his life…

Difficult to judge a title on a single chapter, even if the latter is a whopping 69 pages. In the drawing, Akira Okubo is doing more than well, even if one regrets the weakness of the decorations. In the graphic universe of Naruto , he added a touch of Moebius and Otomo ( Akira ), which reinforces the side of science-fiction of the work. The cutting of boards is dynamic.

Regarding the story, Kishimoto has taken the time to work on this first chapter as it is rich in clues and winks. The title adopts the main characteristics of the shonen nekketsu (kind of inspired by the concept of monomythe developed by Joseph Campbell).

so, There is a hero young, orphan of mother, a priori, with a quest to achieve (to become a samurai), and animated by the sense of sacrifice. The introduction of the universe is simple and concise, the samurai have transcended human limitations by becoming cyborgs as a form of ascension which is reminiscent of the buddhist religion. This last is also ubiquitous in the beginning of the story and the references to its mythology, are legion.

But Kishimoto goes further in this first chapter, it raises a second very interesting read on the social castes and on the a priori. Aware of the brake, that can represent science fiction to a young audience, Kishimoto provides a reading of metaphysics accessible and much less complex than a Ghost in the Shell .

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This first chapter provides undeniably wanting to read more. The wait will not be too long as the pace of the release of this manga is weekly. The bar of the twenty million albums sold in France by the series Naruto will be difficult to achieve, but this first chapter provides the means to respond to such an ambition. This is the initiatory journey of Hachimaru, the quest to save the princess as well as the planet, or even to bring together the other seven keys, everything seems to be cut out to lead the reader into an adventure of several years of reading as the mangaka japanese know so well it works.

SERVICE: Find all the outputs in simultrad in line with izneo